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Monday, 12 August 2013

The Color Disease

New Haven, Vt., 1973. Photo by Nathan Benn.

"Color is good; therefore, more color must be better" might as well be the mantra of the digital age. But still, this is really pretty funny: The New York Times' Lens Blog today features a number of pictures from Nathan Benn's upcoming book Kodachrome Memory: American Pictures 1972–1990 that have had their color jacked up digitally...so they look a lot like digital and unlike Kodachrome. Even though Kodachrome colors are obviously part of the book's concept—I mean, it's right there in the title.

Kodachrome never rendered anything like the paint-set blues and greens in #2, the man's electric blue jacket in #4, or the office worker's magenta sunburn in #9. (The numbers refer to the pictures in the Lens Blog's Nathan Benn portfolio.)

The color in the picture above, titled "New Haven, Vt., 1973," is gorgeous—and yes, on a good monitor, a reasonable approximation of characteristic Kodachrome colors. (The photographer himself says, "I much prefer pictures with a limited color palette.") Lovely photograph.

I liked Matt McCann's essay.

Can't wait for this book. I'm a bit of a sucker for Kodachrome books and websites, I admit. Hope they got the colors right.

Mike(Thanks to Kent Phelan)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Kevin Purcell: "Note that Nathan Benn (the photographer) pops up in the comments and says:

NYTimes did a nice selection from the images in the book. I should note though that the color on the LENS blog is not accurate to the book images. I 'm guessing that it has to do with compression, and some of the blog pictures read as overly saturated, contrasty, and not true color. But I remain grateful for the exposure to the LENS community. A few more of my images, closer to their appearance in the book, are on the book's website at www.kodachromememory.com. I trust you will see some difference.

George Barr: "New Haven, Vt., 1973—What an absolutely wonderful photograph. Have not seen it before and what a pleasure to discover it.

"The photograph tells part of a story, but leaves us to make up the rest. Sure I could talk composition, colour palette, etc., but the real strength in the image is in her posture—even the toes.

"Is she talking with a neighbour about a problem, scolding the kids or pissed off because hubby's off to play ball, again!—we don't know and of course it could be any of those or something else entirely.

"This is the kind of image you could place on a wall and every time you come upon it, make up a new story for the image. Each time you could find another reason it works. For example, notice that both arms line up with the railings on the step as does the raised thigh, while the upper left arm matches the folded leg, the whole thing making a zed (OK, zee) pattern. So many levels, so little time. Thank you Mike and Kent, thank you so very much."

Colin: "That 'New Haven, Vt.' image just captures perfectly the reason why
photography is endlessly fascinating, infuriating, elusive and
unclassifiable. No clever perspective tricks, the subject is centre
frame, colours are muted, nothing is actually happening and it was
probably taken on a camera that's worth about $25 today. And yet I could
look at it all day and still find new things to discover. This is the
antithesis of pixel peeping, gear oriented photography. Just gorgeous."

Comments

Wow! Whoever processed most of these digitally must be an Extreme HDR fan. I think back to Kodachrome as a true high point in film photography. Only the last sample at the end of the essay -- not the gallery -- looks right.

I wonder if someone who did not know Kodachrome assumed that the images were faded and tried to "restore" them. I've noticed, for example, that the muted loveliness of the old Portra NC gets quite jacked up if you color balance using white point and black point in PS curves. You then have to dial the saturation back about 50 percent to get your image back. Kodachrome was a wonderful film. Too bad about some of these.

One of my favorite 'how to' books was 'Kodachrome and How to Use it', a 30's or 40's books by Ivan Dmitri. A very useful guide to exposing early digital cameras, too. I may have gotten on the bandwagon far, far too late, but I have 3 rolls worth of wonder from Yellowstone I'll always treasure.

The one thing the NYT images do show that is consistent with all the Kodachromes that I remember using is the markedly high contrast. Combined with the way we used to shoot it by underexposing to further saturate the colors, contrast was ever present. Lots of detail got lost in those shadows.

Only #1 showed any portion of sky. That sky is not really Kodachrome-like, which would have had a tinge of magenta. More Ektachrome-ish. Ektachrome had great blues. Kodachrome had great reds.

Color impression is surely part of visual memory and I'm guessing that's what legitimated the decision to play around with these shots. Sorry but few remember the range of the Kodachrome "look," so a collective hunch now about the way it looked is good enough for many who'll buy this book.

I brought a Kodak Carousel tray of Kodachrome family pictures to my Uncle and Aunt's last Christmas. The pictures were made from 1960 to 1963 and show all the family members including pets from fifty years ago.

There were tears in my Uncle's eye when he saw, for the first time, a beautiful portrait of his mother when she was healthy vibrant and full of life.

This was the first time in 50 years that this image had been projected (I had reviewed them on a light table before) and not only did it look like the picture was made yesterday but it brought back memories that had nearly faded away.

Those Kodachrome images made last Christmas special since they brought back family members, including my Mom, Dad and brother who now live in our memories.

Timing is sometimes incredible. I am just checking out the web before going to bed and half and hour ago I put out the projector and the 1st roll I shot of Kodachrome.

Mind you, I am 18 now and was 3-4 years younger when I decided to shoot some KR (4 rolls). The first one shot in 2009 and it wad thr first ever roll of slides I shot too. But damn, I took 9 months to do the best of it.
It was Now or never.

I am thinking about sending to print a street scene I got. Well, it would be a C print on a lambda but I could get to practice out framing. Which I've gotten a bug to do. (Great 3 pt article you posted month ago)

As of books. You should check out Daniel Bayer's Kodachrome project. He was on years long project shooting kodachrome and he will release a book
A caveat... He is busy and there's no known date for publishing....
Should be really nice. I might have some sentimental connection as it was a way to learn about Kodachrome. I am waiting for it. I hope it comes before the slides fade.

...I got Sentimental and forgot about the topic of the post.
As I only shot KR64 and really few; also being young I don't know much about it but:
I like how Kodachrome became saturated with sunlight... And those reds; My bad, those are reds!
On shade I had a mixed bag. It got muddy but sometimes with diffuse lighting it worked quite well. As in the example of the girl above.
It was quite contrasty however.

When I think of it. I dislike how we lost a good media; on an archival standpoint. I don't know if current chromogenic materials are up to the century (100-150) dark storage expectancy of Kodachrome. Throw in Ciba/Ilfochrome too.
Sometime I am an archival maniac... But still got many years ahead. Gotta secure those memories!

"New Haven, Vt., 1973" at the beginning of this post perfectly illustrates why I haven't shot another color frame (snapshots and article illustrations aside) since quality processing for Kodachrome 25 stopped being available. There has not been anything close to the rendition of Kodachrome II/25 since. Black and white is all that's left for me.

The original pictures are beautiful.http://www.shorpy.com/Large_Format_Kodachromes
This site has hundreds of 4x5" format examples of Kodachrome color. Thankfully the Library of Congress did not jack-up the color on these pictures.

Wow! - Sometimes I think there is simply NO END to photographs beautiful and original such as Nathan Benn's are.

I don't guess I've ever seen his work before, or that I'm aware of anyway, and Kodachrome or not (and I certainly agree on all the remarks about the wracked out color) to my eyes, Nathan's is yet another example of the extraordinary, everyday originality that we could all drink in and take a lesson from.

This reminds me of the time I saw scans of Farm Security Administration Kodachromes in the library of congress, I was amazed at the accuracy of the color, something that C-41 based internegs and E-6 based transparency copies just couldn't 'nail'. Have yet to see anything like it in digital, altho I have to say I have a buddy that tried the Alien film emulator product and the Kodakchrome setting looked darn close!

What George Barr said about New Haven, Vt., 1973. So casual, perhaps captured on a late summer afternoon as Nathan was approaching the house for supper. So many powerful photographs, such as this, tell us so much about everything outside their frames.

It's also a wonderful example of the three key picture-drivers I howl so tirelessly about: Elements, Relationships, and Gesture.

This image also has that FSA look about it, even though it was captured nearly 40 years later.

BTW, I'm with Auntipode on here, Kodachome II was the bomb, and looked much like the New Haven photograph above. I could never make Kodachrome 25 work at all, it was almost 'garrish', so I quit using it after the change-over. Weirdly enough, I tried the new 120 Kodachrome when it was out back in the 80's, and it looked far more like the old Kodachrome II than Kodachrome 25, but clietns wouldn't wait for the turn-around time!

I would be interested to know what rights to the photographs photographers retained when shooting for the Geographic and was there any difference between the published and unpublished ones. Has the National Geographic changed its policies in recent years?

Nathan Benn's New Haven image is extremely fine, in multiple ways, but let's not get too carried away by nostalgia about Kodachrome - Kodachrome II, that is; the REAL Kodachrome. It could indeed be gorgeous, with a subtle range of colour and tone that has maybe never been matched (no shadow detail, of course). But - certainly with Kodak UK processing - you could get a batch of film that had no colour in it except magenta; or green.

When KII was retired in favour of K64, everyone bitched and moaned but K64 became a mainstay; it was simply much more reliable. Then Fuji started producing some very fine emulsions and lots of people went that route; things move on . . . and the past takes on that rosy tint so beloved of colour shooters everywhere.

"...When KII was retired in favour of K64, everyone bitched and moaned but K64 became a mainstay; it was simply much more reliable. Then Fuji started producing some very fine emulsions and lots of people went that route; things move on..."

Kodachrome II was replaced by Kodachrome 25, not Kodachrome 64. I never found Kodachrome 64 to be remotely as good as its slower sibling. Both the 25 and 64 films were completely "reliable" for a long time after their introductions, especially the Kodachrome 25 Professional (PKM) version.

As with so many aspects of its business, Kodak finished off Kodachrome itself. The death spiral began in earnest when Kodak Processing Labs, which up to that point had returned clean, undamaged and tightly process/color-controlled Kodachrome slides, were spun off into Qualex. From then on, turnaround time, color balance and physical handling slid into the toilet. It was only a matter of time until so few photographers were willing to put up with the situation that master film rolls were spoiling in storage before enough could be sold to use them up.